What men and women crave in our preaching is to hear a Voice from beyond and to catch the outline of a loving Face. The only adequate response to such a yearning is God's saving power manifested toward the souls of men and women through God's ministers.
Preaching with power has certain unmistakable features. The first is a sense of claim; the second, convicting power through the skillful handling and interpretation of God's Word; and finally, the presence of the Holy Spirit. This last point, of course, may be considered the all-important one, yet it operates through the first two. All too often we preach and act as if all the responsibility rested upon the Holy Spirit. If the results are meager, then it is thought that this can hardly be the fault of the worker. We feel we must wait for the latter rain before results can be expected. But there are certain areas where the vital responsibility is the minister's. Consider this sense of claim that should mark the preaching of every minister.
The Summoning Note
A sermon fails unless it carries something of a summons from the eternal God. It must possess the note of summons to the will, to the entire being. This sense of claim is born of God's work in the preacher himself, God actively probing me, challenging me, calling on me for a decision, and asking me to get others to make the same kind of decision.
Many sermons lack this summoning note. They are mere Sabbath assignments, a task to be done, with little or no sense of claim felt by the people. Such sermons cannot edify or confirm in the truth. Does God ever come to a man or a woman without making a claim or a demand upon him? "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock," is the personal claim of God for a personal response.
It is said of Whitefield's preaching that each person in his audience felt as though the message were intended for him alone. This is what makes the preaching of Billy Graham so convincing. We may object to some of his music, his vehemence, his hell- fire preaching; nevertheless, he comes with a tremendous sense of personal claim upon the hearts of his hearers. This is one of the great reasons why men and women by the tens of thousands flock to hear him. It is not all due to good publicity and backing.
The fact remains that in our preaching too much of this eternal claim is lacking. One gets the impression all too often that the preacher is merely sitting back and talking about God, about doctrine and a host of other related topics; whereas, in effective preaching we become inescapably aware that God is talking to us, asking us questions, and expecting an answer; He offers us here and now the salvation and succor which we most desperately need.
Such preaching is grounded on that intimate awareness of Another. Isaiah's impassioned plea for righteousness sprang from his sense of an eternal fellowship and holiness. All the prophets felt the same way. Christian preaching must be rooted in that persuasive faith and piercing conviction that in the message of the everlasting gospel which we are preaching next Sab bath morning lies the sole hope of salvation for mankind.
If the preacher is going to preach with power, he must change some of his perspectives and attitudes. If he regards the truth and realities of Adventism as just so many ideas to study and preach about, he cannot help having an attitude of detachment from people. The irresistible commitment in favor of truth will be absent and the sense of claim blurred. If, on the other hand, the preacher is moved, not by mere intellectual arguments, but by a spirit of real concern for others; if he is primarily interested, not in making a good case, but in finding a good cause; if he aspires, not simply to spread ideas about truth, but to make decisions for truth; if he hungers and thirsts for righteousness and for the establishment of the kingdom of God in the hearts of his hearers, then he cannot help preaching with this overwhelming sense of claim. It will be heard and felt in his voice. It will be seen in his eyes and manner. The theological departments of our schools should strive to be centers of such prophetic preaching, as well as centers of learning in the skilled interpretation of the Scriptures.
A Concern for Souls
The sense of deep concern for lost souls cannot be too urgently stressed as a basis for effective preaching. This will not permit the preacher to become a dogmatist who worships the letter, who absolutizes ideas and makes them his god. What kills preaching is the preacher's loss of his concern for people and his transferring his loyalty from God to mere ideas about Him. His great concern is for what he considers cherished truths all neatly labeled and filed away where they can be drawn out the moment his dogmatic orthodoxy is challenged. Such preachers become smug, complacent, cock sure, contentious, and intolerant and indifferent to others. They claim to be experts in the knowledge of the road maps of the King's highway, but they do not seem to walk that way, nor have their footprints fallen in places where Christ's feet trod. Consequently, there is no clear path for others to follow. They have glorified religious ideas at the cost of loving people. They make the formal acceptance of the tenets of the faith, rather than the divine encounter with Jesus Christ, the test for baptism and church membership. They cherish the illusion of genuine accomplishment when candidates for church membership give an affirmative answer to formalized aspects of the faith. No one can become so mechanical, so spiritually wilted, as a professional preacher who has lost his concern for souls and the sense of his personal relationship with a loving heavenly Father.
When we as ministers of God squarely face the true meaning of the loud cry, a vital concern will be aroused within us. We will put to ourselves such questions as these: What must I do? How can I be what I ought to be? How can I preach with a greater sense of God's claim upon my own soul and upon others? No preacher will ever come to know the truth about himself until he faces such questions as these.
Frankly, I do not believe we can expect the latter rain until we feel the concern needed to awaken us to new experiences in prayer and in Bible study. Preaching of things divine can be obtained only by those in whom personal concern has been born and who have made an absolute commitment. True knowledge of God and the preaching of His message are not possible where concern and commitment are absent. This makes the difference between men who are called by God to preach and men who are looking for a job.
It is obvious that the Holy Spirit is not going to make us skillful interpreters of the Word of God unless we make the most dili gent application of our own minds. The passion for lost souls and for the kingdom of God as the great business of our lives will also fire us with a zeal to know the depths of the truths of God's Word. No man can have the first without having the spirit of the Reformers. No man can have the second without having a concern for preach ing the message of truth.
With a passion unmatched in the annals of the world, the prophets of old, the apostles, and the great Reformers were dominated by a passion for truth and righteous ness, even at the price of persecution and excommunication. Such truth is never abstract. Persons and personal attitudes enter at every point. This is at once obvious, because the work of God through the prophets, the apostles, and the Reformers has always been to transform men into the image of Christ.
The one really significant thing about the Hebrew patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles was that God was their God. They believed they were the dynamic, irresistible instruments of His glorious purpose. Without this their lives would have remained utterly obscure.
Preaching with power is vitalized with the personality of a divine Person! It seems so easy to mix morals and ethics with religion, and call it preaching. It is always possible to "believe the Bible from cover to cover" and to proclaim "the Bible and the Bible only" without leading people to Him who is "the way, the truth, and the life." It is equally possible to know the historical development of God's work in the Advent Movement and yet fail to preach the summons of the Eternal. All successful preaching of the great doctrinal truths of the Bible must be accompanied by a spiritual, living encounter with the Saviour of those truths.
Our Great Need
Preaching is nothing short of an encounter with God, if it is preaching with power. It often occasions a profound disturbance in the lives of the hearers. Jacob knew this experience when in the night the human assailant was crippled by the divine Wrestler, but there came with it a new name and a new nature. Paul likewise was apprehended, grasped, and laid hold upon by one who encountered him in life's way. All his acts and all his sermons from then on were flooded with new light and meaning. His entire personality belonged to Another in all the intimacy of personal- devotion. We ministers of God in this last hour must also feel God as a consuming fire within. We must meet God personally and experience a blending of God and man. Only thus will we learn to preach with that heavenly power which attended the preaching of the apostle in his warfare for God. And surely nothing short of this kind of preaching will meet the tremendous needs of this unprecedented hour of history.
Jesus Christ is the gateway to a genuine knowledge of all the truths we teach and preach. No preacher can preach the Word who does not unlock its treasures with the true and only Key, which is Christ. Christ can never be preached by men who would deal with mere ideas, but only by those who know and obey God's claim upon their lives, and whose commitment is complete. At the center of Adventism is not a neat bundle of foolproof doctrines but a PERSON!
One thing, my fellow workers, seems to stand out. It is time that we felt deeply our weakness and our humiliating limitations. We are fully aware that the battle will be won by Him who said, "I have overcome the world." But what of us in this hour of great need? For how much delay in the coming of Christ may we be held accountable? Surely we have failed as preachers and need forgiveness. Surely we have departed far from the spirit and mind of the Reformers and those who founded this movement. To fall on our knees, to acknowledge our need, and to supplicate for pardon and help are not to abdicate our ministry in any way at all. Rather they are acts of heaven-born conviction that a loving God, ever ready to aid His ministers, cannot allow to go unanswered.
There is no way we can escape the ultimate responsibility of directing the work of God. I am sure that none of us wishes to do so. To know that we have a great Companion at our side who will not abandon us though we err seventy times seven, should lead us to seek His face with a new confidence. The sublime, saving truth that we preach resides in Christ. Jesus longs to.be preached with personal claim. He seeks no dwelling place but that of a humble and a contrite heart.
The question of our preaching with power depends upon the type of personal response we will give to this very vital problem.
